


Between The Cracks

by taichara



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-21 07:32:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2460083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Eurasia Incident, the Nightmare Incident -- the world has been picking itself up, slowly but surely, after these catastrophes and the smaller horrors that followed.  But a few things were swept aside in the chaos, and that oversight may get messy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Escape

_Out --_

_Out --_

Over and over again, a silent manic mantra that rattled through his head as he hammered away at the wall; not the doors, never the doors, because those were long since barricaded against the worst he could offer, but the walls surrounding them. He would get out, and when he did he'd find that power he was missing. He'd be out of this half-darkened prison, and he'd find that power.

He'd take it, and then it would he his, and he would never be missing a part of his self again. 

_Out, and I'll make it mine, and then we'll have a wonderful game to play --_

Fists, sabre, buster. Fists, sabre, buster. A mindless rhythm, over and over and over again until the wall began finally to buckle and crack. It was maddening in its own way that he couldn't use more than his simplest weapons to batter himself free, but he simply didn't have the reserves to spare -- as it was, too much time had been wasted, over and over, draining dry the last drops of energen to be scavenged from the wreckage of the labs. Even the Souls were long since consumed, a fact that galled him to no end. He'd never expected that; that plan fell apart almost instantly, and he'd had to make adjustments. How long had it been? Not that it mattered, really, so long as he got out of the mad jaws of this prison and filled that empty, hungering void inside. It wasn't funny, now; no, this was dire necessity. He knew where to find them when he was ready, though, no rush. 

With a tortured squeal of metal, the wall gave way, a shower of rubble and glistening shards crashing down around him. The splinters tangled in the ghastly pale mass of his hair and scored new scars into the bruise-dark plating of his armour, slashed thin grooves down one parchment-dry cheek, and he didn't care. 

He was _out_ \--

-*-

Few folks, human or reploid, cared to think about the labyrinth of passages that snaked beneath the City's surface, far from the glittering spires that marked their collective triumph over the Eurasia disaster. The passages and their scattered chambers were a memory of hell on earth, when the surviving population had burrowed underground like moles to try and save themselves from the madness that was destroying the planet's surface. It had worked, of course, and now the massive metropoli soared once again -- which was why the warrens were soundly ignored. No one wanted to be reminded of that hell.

No one, that is, except for the dogged green-plated engineering reploids who maintained the City's delicate support structures and the infinity of conduits that fed its voracious need for power. Dover and his men made a point of not going any deeper than they needed, mind you -- once the smooth metallic passages began to look frazzled and scorched, with feeble lights and strange patches of fungiborgs, that was far enough -- but they were proud of their work in keeping the City running. So when an entire sub-grid was threatening to fail and take a good six City blocks' worth of power with it, Dover plugged into the main grid and tracked down the problem. And then swore a blue streak.

"Well, boys, it's down the Well for us. Can't be helped; something's gone and frazzled up the Sixteenth Sou'western feed."

His crew bitched and complained for all of half a minute before Dover cut them off with a prompt crashing of gauntleted fist against a pillar. 

"Now knock that off! It could be worse, y'know. Now get yer gear and get moving, and w'luck we'll all be topside before shift's end and the mettaurs can do the grunt work."

The Well was the local access into the labyrinth's guts, a smoothly bored shaft lined with blackened titanium that plunged into the depths of the Earth itself. Every once in a while -- maybe every thirty, forty feet -- the Well sprouted branches, passageways that led to abandoned bunkers, twisting mazes and stranger things. The City's subterranean monorail dodged around the Well's shaft, as if the designers had gone out of their way to deny the existence of whatever lay below. Five branches down lay the Sixteenth Southwestern Energen Conduit, and that was where Dover's little convoy of engineers ratcheted themselves down the shaft of the Well to fix the glitch.

They never came back up again.

-*-

X had heard some damned strange beginnings to Hunter meetings before, but today's had to be ranking right up there in terms of sheer mind-blowing insanity. It was like the universe had decided life was too quiet after the mess with Lumine and he needed a jolt to wake him up.

"Hold on, let me get this straight. An entire shift of municipal engineering personnel got themselves _eaten_?"

"Wasn't me."

'Oh, ha ha Zero. Be serious."

"I _am_ being serious. Mostly. Just getting the obvious on record so Signas can send it and my activity records off to the Senate before they decide to try to dissect me. Haven't trusted me since the Nightmare, the paranoid bastards."

Very pointedly, X ignored Zero's sardonic smirk across the table and swiveled in his seat to address Signas directly. The Hunter Commander looked just as perplexed by this new development as X felt and for once was making no effort to hide it. That he was the only one of the six of them to be in anything resembling formal uniform just made the whole thing even stranger.

_Okay, granted I wasn't on shift and neither was Axl, and Zero just finished terrorizing a batch of youngsters and was probably about to come looking for us anyway. Maverick activity's been slow -- and I'm not complaining!_

_But why call us all in without an armour-up directive? And just us? Us, and Alia, and Layer. That's a damned weird combo, Signas, what're you playing at?_

"Sir? I know you must have a reason for ..."

Signas sighed and nodded once, and X's peripheral vision suddenly blossomed to life with a series of blinking filenames. The squeak of surprise from Axl, on his left, and Zero's startled snarl told him that they'd received the same sudden download.

"Sir ..?"

"Take a look, X, and tell me what you think. Zero, Axl, you as well. Once you've seen the visual reports I'll elaborate on what we're going to be dealing with here."

Folding his hands in front of him, Signas leaned back in his seat and stared at them, impassive as a statue. It'd be impossible to get anything else out of the man when he was like that, X knew. Heaving a mock sigh he threw a look of appeal towards Alia, but the blonde Navigator simply smiled devilishly and shook her head. Okay, then, no hints. Well, time to get down to business in that case ...

_Oh. Oh, my god._

'Eaten' was perhaps not _quite_ accurate, though X could understand why Signas had used the word. The bodies of the six engineers were torn open, their torso chassis shredded and their internal systems torn out, fluid lines plucked free -- they looked as if they'd been bled dry. Three of the deceased had had their DNA cores removed altogether, and the other three cores were shattered in places, as if bitten or gouged. There was no sign of their equipment; the supervisor's implanted analytical systems and microtoolkit were torn off and also missing.

Before X could open his mouth, Zero sat bolt upright and swore, his hair all but bristling with agitation.

"Yeah, I'm being mostly serious alright. See those slashes, there and there?"

Zero gestured into empty air; simultaneously, the wounds in question lit up in X's HUD.

"Those're sabre marks. So whoever did this used a beam sabre on top of whatever other plasma-based weaponry they brought to bear. Yeah, Signas, you better make damn sure you cover for me --"

Without a change of expression, Signas leaned heavily onto the table and pinned Zero with his gaze. The Hunter quieted, if reluctantly, and waited for the Commander to speak up.

"I am well aware of that necessity, Zero, and especially in combination with the reports we've been receiving of a so-called 'ghost Zero' supposedly sighted down below on more than one occasion. And before you open your mouth, no I didn't inform you and no, I would never have bothered until this issue came up."

Padding around the desk, Alia squeezed Zero's shoulder lightly in passing as she made her way to Signas' perch with an armload of datapads.

"There's been reports of ghost-you ever since you died in the Eurasia crash, you know. I'm not surprised they haven't stopped -- half the civilians probably think you're some kind of revenant, what with your inability to stay peacefully deceased and all."

"Yeah, well, I've got a history of clones, too."

X, busily scribbling notes to a mental logfile, was promply pinged by Axl, who was otherwise staying very quiet and very wide-eyed.

_[Clones?!]_

_[There's been two -- haven't you caught up on the history logs yet? -- the black armoured clone that Sigma created and the Zero Nightmare. It's not impossible that someone's done it again ... That's not even Zero's original body you're looking at. That's the third, and we're not sure who exactly put him back together.]_

_[He's like you, though, isn't he? What all the rest of us're based on, not really a "reploid".]_

_[*sigh* Yeah, basically, but no one's based on Zero. He's pretty stubborn about it and so are the medical techs. Not a good idea --]_

"-- Now, if you two are quite finished gossiping ~"

\-- Alia flicked a few drops of coffee at the pair, prompting a disgusted 'ewww' from Axl and a muttered complaint from Signas that she was ruining his coffee --

"-- here's what Layer and I have pieced together so far. There's at least two other incidents that, combined with this incident, look to be the results of the same killer, and one of the engineers from this latest incident fled and survived. We need to check this out, but we need to be discreet about it ..."

"Which is why we're being all hush-hush and casual."

Signas offered the trio of Hunters the slightest of wry little smiles.

"I want you three to get into the underways and see what you can find. Talk to the survivor and the other engineering crews that work in that quadrant; do a little poking around of your own, Question some of the scavenging tribes down there, if you can find them. There's nothing down there that should be a major threat to three veteran Hunters.

"Do _not_ take any decisive action until its been cleared by HQ barring an immediate and dire emergency. We want to know what's going on, but murderers don't automatically mean Mavericks. Alia and Layer will Navigate for you -- and down there, you're going to need it.

"Dismissed, and happy Hunting."


	2. Complications

_Damnit, I hate being down here. Makes me think I'm going to be locked away or something -- and I don't know why I think that. Which makes it worse._

_Faugh._

_If there's another damned copy of me down here somewhere, screw the 'mystery killer' -- I'm going to tear its core out. And eat the damn thing._

To say that Zero disliked the catacombs would be a great understatement, oh yes. As it was, he was slinking stubbornly through a winding, crumbling passageway, following his own audio pickup and Layer's careful directions, and swearing under his breath with every step he took. There was too much interference to track his quarry directly, and the 'handicap' made him even more irritable.

_I can't believe I'm down here looking for a pack of scavengers while X is off socializing with the gearheads. Then again, I'd be bored to death if I had to listen to them I suppose._

_Now, where are the little bastards hiding --_

An electrified wrench whizzed past his helmet, nearly clipping one red horn, and Zero leapt back with a howl of outrage, sabre drawn and activated in one smooth sweep before his feet touched the ground again. Ahead, and to his left -- yes, there they were, he could all but smell them even over the stench of the tunnels. They weren't getting away --

_Hold up, hooooold up there. Damn, I'm more jittery than I thought I was.  
Damnit, there isn't a pocket of the Virus down here, is there?!_

Internal diagnostics chirped back that no, there was no Virus; or, at least, no Virus that was amping up his systems and giving him a good dose of bloodlust while it was at it. As he stood there drawing long and measured breaths, cycling the air through his cooling systems, Zero spotted the glint of optics in the dim light ahead and snorted, shoving his sabre back into its shoulder-holster.

"Come out here and talk like a thinking being, damn you! I'm here to get information, not be a brightly coloured target for you to toss trash at!"

"... It talks!"

A chattering chorus of 'it talks! it talks!' ricocheted through the passageway, moving towards him, and Zero found himself gritting his teeth and trying not to burst into frustrated growls. He'd found the scavengers, alright. A hodgepodge group of humans and civilian-type reploids, all equally grimy, grungy and generally rodent-looking and all carrying makeshift tools and a few long outdated personal blasters. Lovely. Wonderful. Managing as much of a smile as he could, Zero raised his empty hands.

"Yeah, I talk. That's what I'm here for, talking. I'm not going to attack you -- as long as you don't try to brain me again! -- I just have some questions ... hey!"

Apparently emboldened by Zero's words, the scavengers had crept closer -- and now crowded around him on all sides, poking and prodding and stroking the crimson contours of his armour with curious, much-too-curious hands. Snapping, Zero swatted at the worst of the offenders.

"The hell's wrong with you people anyway?!"

"Red -- you're a red one, man. You're the Hunter?"

This from a grizzled human male decked out in grimy coveralls and a once-white shirt. He carried himself with a certain amount of authority and didn't sound completely out of his mind, which made Zero inclined to answer him with something resembling civility.

"Yeah, I'm 'the' Hunter. I suppose you know my name's Zero, right? And I'm not dead, by the way. What's all this about? I've always worn red armour."

"The wraith down here don't wear no red armour, Hunter sir. It's all the colour of a bruise, black and blue and purple, and its hair is sickly pale. Sometimes pink-pale in patches, like its dyed it in blood long and long past, but when it looks like that it don't bother us none. Been killing folks, though, and we don't want t'be taking no chances." 

"And it looks like me."

Zero's voice was flat. Not again.

"Well, it used a burning sabre like yours, Hunter sir. And the long hair, swayin' when it tears and creeps through the tunnels. Think it's been growin' though; its leaving bigger messes behind it."

"Where do you see this thing?"

"Down deep, Hunter sir, where no one's gone since the sky fell."

"Then that's where I'm going to go. Get yourselves out of here and stay out of the way."

Leaping clear of the mass of scavengers and ignoring the cries of fright, Zero dashed back the way he came, his vision clouding red. Not another damned clone. Not again. Not ever again. 

He wanted more than anything else in that moment to chase down the doppelganger; but he had to report back first and share the data with the others. Then, then he could hunt down whatever twisted twin-spawn was on the loose this time.

-*-

"Okay, let me make sure I have all the details. The thing that attacked was some kind of reploid or mechaniloid ..."

"Definitely a reploid, X, sir. Mechaniloids don't usually have pseudoflesh and this thing did, at least its face."

"Reploid, then. And it was armoured in a dark blue-black or maybe dark purple, and had long pale hair?"

"Yessir. That's correct."

The poor shell-shocked engineer -- Tavi, X had learned -- had been nervous at first, and X could hardly blame him after what had happened. But after a few minutes in X's presence Tavi had calmed down considerably, and now the two were having a nice if not exactly pleasant chat in Tavi's cubby of an office. It was the armour, X supposed, and what that blue plating signified to the average person; there were times when his reputation was really a good thing.

"Reploid, purple or bluish black, long hair -- pale, long hair. Did they use a weapon? .. I'm sorry, Tavi, I really am, but I need to ask these things ..."

"I know, I know, sir. I just -- it's hard, y'know?"

Tavi took a long swing of his drink, screwed his eyes shut, and heaved a breath before continuing. 

"It's hard ... but, yeah, there was weapons. Buster like yours, a little --"

\-- and the engineer glanced towards X's armoured hand --

"and some kind of beam weapon. But it called energy right from the floor under us, pillars of it! And then started slashing and shooting and tearing, roaring something about needing power -- I had to run -- I ..."

"No one's faulting you for running, Tavi, I promise. That's all anyone would do in that kind of situation, and what you can tell me because you ran is going to help us get justice for the others. I promise that, too. And I keep my promises."

-*-

As far as he was concerned, Axl had wriggled his way into having the best of the three assignments. Let X play councilor to traumatized engineers and Zero go hunting around for weirdo scavengers; he was getting to go exploring the tunnels for signs of the beastie itself. Much, much better, thank you! Of course, he hadn't been so sloppy as to go down there as himself -- he'd gotten permission to sample one of the remaining DNA cores, and now one of the dead engineers was sauntering along down in the deeps of the Well's branches, alert for any signs of weirdos.

He'd already been down in the deeps for a few hours now, though, and Alia hadn't even had anything to say to him in ages. Maybe 'better' was going to turn into 'boring' after all ...

_Wait, what was that ...?_

Down, down in a side passage, there was a flicker of light that shouldn't be there. Now that was promising. Axl hardly spared the moment needed to inform Alia of his new plan before he was speeding down the corridor towards the wan patch of light. A good hundred metres or so further down the tunnel, where was it -- there. Half hidden by a pile of scrap metal on his right was a lone security door, cracked open. Nothing unusual pinged on his sensor suite; no Virus, no weird energies, no firewalls.

_Still, it can't hurt to go check, right?_

Easing the engineer's bulkier frame past the mounds of scrap, Axl found himself tottering on the edge of a sudden steep drop. The floor of the chamber was sunken a good twenty feet or so below the door, with a rusted, rickety metal staircase descending to the bottom; judging from the revetments still protruding from the walls, the room had once contained generators of some kind. Probably to power a couple of shelters, Axl figured, as he picked his way down the stairs. 

Scattered across the floor were shattered mettaur carcasses, other dismembered mechaniloids that Axl recognized from Sigma's last major terror, when Red died -- some of which were halfway to being kit-bashed back together, if the scatter of mismatched tools were any indication -- and mounds of twisted metal, chunks of armour parts, and other bits of debris. One corner in particular was mounded up with ragged tarps, empty energen cells, and --

_Holeee that looks like Zero's --!_

Zero's battered breastplate and gauntlets, falling apart and coloured a sickly pinkish-violet splashed nearly black where the plates were battered almost into powder, were piled up carelessly, half buried under the mound. A chunk of a helmet lay within arm's reach of them. 

Stunned, Axl picked up his pace -- and was bludgeoned clear off the stairs by a dead weight that landed squarely on top of him.

"You -- no --!"

That voice -- it _sounded_ like Zero. Like Zero, run through a distorter every few syllables. Grunting with the impact as he hit the floor, Axl kicked like a mad thing and rolled while his assailant scrabbled at him. Grabbed by one wrist, he was wrestled flat on his back and pinned between two piles of scrap, seeing stars.

Grinning through the pain, Axl dropped his transformation trance and shifted back to his own frame, gratified to hear the yelp of surprise -- _hah! off-balance now, aren't you?_ \-- and then the cry of alarm as he pulled a pistol from subspace and leveled it at his attacker's head. The unknown went very, very still, giving him more than enough time to get his eyes recalibrated ...

_Holeee ..._

It was Zero. Sort of. 

Strange, kind of sickly pallor, green, green eyes -- and pale pink hair bleached out colourless in patches -- dressed in a faded body sheath but not much else. The not-Zero stared down at him, wide-eyed, before ever so slowly shifting his gaze to try and peer at the muzzle clamped against the side of his head. Then, equally slowly, began to shift his weight away from Axl.

"You ... A Hunter, one of the Hunters, right? Didn't ... I didn't -- I stay here, where they don't see me. I can't go back. Can't go back, the blue will kill me again ...

"Not Zero, I'm not Zero any more ...

"Where are my Hunters?"

Gingerly, Axl moved the pistol away but kept it trained on the stranger, gesturing once with it that the pink-haired doppelganger had better get off him altogether and right now, thank you. The apparition didn't need to be told twice; he scuttled backwards and scrambled to his feet, eyes still glued on Axl and the weapon. Axl moved a step closer, eyes narrowing.

"Who the hell are you? _What_ are you?"

Shakily, the stranger raked a hand through his tangled hair.

"The Nightmare did this to me. Made me into this. I can't go back, you see ...?  
"So I stay down here, down here near the beginning, and Hunt what I can Hunt where the blue light doesn't shine ..."

"Nightmare? ... You're the _Zero_ Nightmare! Holy --!"

A high-pitched whine cut Axl off as the Zero Nightmare clenched one hand into a fist and rammed it against his own temple, shaking his head violently, and Axl unconsciously stepped back a pace.

"Zero -- where is Zero ...?"

"He's not here! He's following Hunter directives somewhere else, and you aren't him!"

"I know, I _know_ that -- Zero killed me, was supposed to kill me. He had to finish what X wouldn't, the stupid blue. He always did pull his punches, you know ..."

Trailing off, the Zero Nightmare wandered away -- no longer caring about the gun trained on his core -- and dropped to one knee to dig furiously through a pile of scrap and scavenged parts. Confused, Axl followed after him only to be brought up short by the creature's cry of triumph, and a moment later a shattered buster lens and a broken sabre were tossed at his feet. They looked like they could belong to Zero --

"Those are yours?"

"Broken a long time ago -- maybe not so long ago -- but useless now, anyway. I can only Hunt the small pesty ones now, have to avoid the big ones ... but you're a Hunter. One of my Hunters.  
"Will you do what your officer can't do now? Will you Hunt that damned Maverick?"

_Oh god, he's out of his mind. Definitely out of his mind._

_But he's -- not really dangerous. Maybe? And what's that about a Maverick?_

"Which Maverick?"

The Zero Nightmare rocked back on his heels and snorted his hair out of his face, favoring Axl with an incredulous stare.

"The Nightmare one with the poisoned purple night armour and the colourless hair. The Maverick from the workshops down deep below, where I came from; where I was tainted with the Nightmare a long time ago.

"You need to do it. I can't do it. I just stay here and catch the smaller ones. That's how I'm not dead. Why they aren't dead. Until the Maverick came up from the labs sealed away, from the Gate sealed away."

The look in the mad green eyes as the Zero Nightmare met his gaze was appealing, almost pathetic. It was time to stow the gun, Axl decided, and was rewarded with the doppelganger visibly relaxing as soon as it was out of sight. The Zero Nightmare had the right weapons, but they were apparently nonfunctional; surely it wasn't the source of the murders? The kibble and scrap scattered around looked more like a scavenger's hoard than a predator's lair full of trophies. 

Damnit, he hated hard choices. Hard choices sucked; what if he made the wrong one?

Damnit.

"I'll tell you what. You stay here, out of sight -- you can manage with what you have here, right? You don't have to leave right away? -- and I'll go Hunt. But I'll be coming back here when I'm done. Okay?"

"I'll be here. Come back and report to me."

"... Yeah. I'll report."

Turning on his heel, Axl made for the stairs. When he wasn't attacked from behind, he climbed up to the door and slipped back out into the main passageway; from where he stood he could hear the Zero Nightmare chattering to himself.

_Oh boy. Just what I needed -- well, time to make up some kind of story for Alia. 'I ran into a crazy in a side tunnel'_

_Heh. Not even a lie!_


End file.
